


Mabelgram

by scribefindegil



Series: Mabel Pines vs. The Multiverse [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Multiverse Theory, Self-Love, The Power Of Mabel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 11:51:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8843737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: Mabel gives herself a pep talk. Actually, she gives it to all her selves.





	

Mabel pulled the hem of her sweater down so that the star was shooting straight across her chest instead of off to the side. She straightened her headband and made sure both the band-aids on her knees were stuck down all the way. Then she looked up nervously at the glowing blue spiral in front of her and cleared her throat.

“Can they hear me yet?” she asked.

Grunkle Ford stepped back and lifted up the mask he’d been wearing. There was sweat beading on his forehead and his whole face matched the color of his nose.

“Very nearly!” he said. “Just one more minor calibration!”

Mabel nodded, and Grunkle Ford put the mask back on and went back to tinkering with one of his weird science tools. This one looked kind of like the drills they’d used in wood shop class, except the bit was some sort of green laser and sometimes it went cloudy and would go straight through the thing he was working on.

“Grunkle Ford?”

She thought he might be grumpy with her for interrupting, but when the mask came off there was a smile on his sweaty red face.

“Yes, Mabel?”

“If . . .” Dang, she’d been so busy worrying about what she was going to say once he got it working that her brain didn’t want to make any more words. She took a deep breath and hoped that her mouth would figure it out. “If something goes weird . . . er than usual and I get zapped into another dimension, you’ll come get me, right?”

Grunkle Ford’s eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead so they looked like the cast-on row of her fluffiest gray yarn.

“Why? Are you having second thoughts?”

Mabel rolled her eyes. “No, I’m just checking. Besides, if you’re right about this whole bazillion universes thing, there’s probably one where I do get zapped into another one, and that Mabel’s gonna be super glad I asked.”

His face softened. “I promise it’s extremely unlikely or I wouldn’t be letting you do this. But I also promise that if it does happen none of us will ever give up on you.”

“Okay. Good.” She set her jaw like she was being Super Serious, but then she remembered that she was _Mabel_ and seriousness was for other people, and there wasn’t really any point to this whole thing if she didn’t act like herself. She needed to be her. As her as she could be.

Grunkle Ford poked the thing one final time and then stepped away.

“All right,” he said. “Everything’s set up. You just need to step into the field and say your piece.” Then he gave her a grin and an encouraging thumbs-up, which was nice because he’d been acting all Serious Scientist for a while and it was nice to be reminded that really he was almost as silly as she was.

She gave him a double thumbs-up for extra enthusiasm and then jumped into the light.

It didn’t feel like anything, not even warm, but she looked down for a second and her feet weren’t on the ground, so probably it was doing whatever science-y magic-y thing it did to make this work. She only had a couple of minutes, Grunkle Ford had said. Better make them count.

“Hi!” she said, waving determinedly at the space in front of her. She couldn’t see anything but the swirls of light, but she just pretended that one little spiral was like the lens of Dipper’s video camera.

“My name’s Mabel Pines. If we got this right, so is yours. So it turns out there’s like a million bazillion universes and they’re all different. Find a nerd and make them explain it to you. It’s complicated. I’m not you, but I also kind of am? We’re just from different universes. Maybe they’re super duper close and you can’t even tell that I’m not from your universe, or maybe you’re like ‘Whaaa? _That_ can’t be Mabel Pines! She’s nothing like me!’

“So again: Hi Mabel, it’s Mabel! My Grunkle Ford has this thing that lets me talk to you. Not, like, you specifically, but all of you. I can’t prove that this isn’t just a dream or something because hey, your dream-brain probably knows you better than I do, but even if you do think that I’m a dream I want you to listen to me for a minute.”

She swallowed. This was harder than she’d thought. It was like in third grade when they all wrote letters to their future selves except times a million. But it was important. That’s why when Grunkle Ford explained what the sparkly ball he was about to throw into the Bottomless Pit did, she’d asked him to wait. He’d told her that he’d gotten it when he was travelling, with the idea of warning all the other Stanford Pineses about Bill, but he was always too afraid to use it. He didn’t like thinking about what state those other hims might be in.

Mabel didn’t like thinking about all the things that might have happened to the other Mabels, either. But that was exactly why they needed her.

“The universe that I’m in, things are good. We had a lot of close calls. Like, a lot a lot. But I’m okay, and so’s Dipper, and Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford, and I know I’m not supposed to say too many spoilers but if you don’t know about your Grunkles you need to look for them, okay? Because they need our help. In most universes probably. No offence, Grunkle Ford, if you’re listening.

“I really really hope that things are good for most of you too, but I know for some of you they’re not. That’s how this whole multiverse thing works, I guess. And I wish I could fix it. I wish I could make every single one of you happy because every single one of you deserves to be, but I can’t. All I can do is say that—that you do deserve to be happy. No matter what universe you’re in. No matter what mistakes you’ve made, and I’ve made a couple of doozies let me tell you.”

Mabel paused and swallowed. Her mouth was getting dry and her chest felt all tight and full, like a balloon someone had blown up just a bit too much.

“Growing up doesn’t mean giving up,” she blurted out. “Not on your dreams, not on your family, not on you. People will try to tell you that it does but they’re all buttfaces! You don’t have to be a kid to be hopeful and you don’t need to be perfect to be good, and if some good-for-nothing unicorn says you aren’t good enough you should punch her right in the face!”

Her eyes stung but she wasn’t crying. Mabel swiped a hand across them anyway and balled her other hand up into a fist—her thumb on the outside, just like Grunkle Stan had taught her. She tried to imagine not having Grunkle Stan or Grunkle Ford. She tried to imagine not having any of her friends there to cheer her up when she wanted to hide in Sweater Town forever. When they got back to the Shack she was going to hug everyone because just imagining for a moment that she didn’t have them made her feel like wool that had shrunk in the wash. And then she was going to cry for all the Mabels out there whose universes had been cruel to them. But she couldn’t waste time crying now.

“I don’t really know you,” she said, “But I know that you’re amazing, because _I’m_ amazing, and all of you are almost me. And maybe you don’t feel amazing and maybe your world isn’t amazing and that’s okay. Even if—even if your world isn’t amazing because of something you did. That’s not all you are, and you can work to make it better, and if someone lied to you or tricked you what they did isn’t your fault. I promise.

“And you know, maybe wherever you are is bad because of things that other people did. Maybe you’re in the middle of a worldwide takeover by the lizard people or something. I know the world is big and scary and you can't fix everything. But you can’t give up either. Your friends, your family, your universe needs you to do what you can, even if it’s only making a few people laugh during the apocalypse or making sure that the people around you have sweaters so that they stay warm. That’s still important. You’re still important, even if you don’t feel like it.”

The light was starting to fade. She could see the trees beyond it, just fuzzy outlines for the moment, but slowly getting clearer. She didn’t have much time.

“And Mabels?” She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged herself tight tight tight. As tight as she’d hugged Grunkle Stan when he first remembered her name without someone else telling him. As tight as she’d hugged Grunkle Ford on the walk back to the shack when she saw that he was crying. As tight as she’d hugged Dipper every morning since Weirdmageddon, when they woke up and they were both okay and there and the world wasn’t over.

Mabel unwrapped her arms from her chest and smiled to herself. To all her selves.

“I love you.”

She stepped back. The light faded until it looked like a couple of day-old glow bracelets. Then the base of the device folded up around it. It hovered in front of her for a few seconds, glittering like a disco ball, before it shot up high into the sky.

Mabel didn’t look away when it exploded. For a split-second it looked like the brightest firework she’d ever seen, hundreds and hundreds of glittering sparks shooting out from it in every direction. Then, abruptly, they vanished.

“And there you are,” said Grunkle Ford, sweeping her up and setting her on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” said Mabel. She leaned over and rested her head on the downy curls of his hair as he carried her back to the house where their family was waiting, whole and happy and safe.

“Here I am.”


End file.
